Kudos and expectations On the first of January, 1991, Philip Singer retired as associate editor of this journal in order to devote more time to his teaching and research at the University of North Carolina. He will be sorely missed. ES&T has been blessed with several editors who served for several terms, but none has been more influential to the journal than Dr. Singer. Phil had the responsibility for papers in the areas of water treatment, inorganic processes, water disinfection, and many others. His high principles in judging these papers helped set the standard for the journal for which it is now noted. As much as any other person, Phil had a vision of ES&T as the premier journal of environmental chemistry in the world, and he put this vision to work as he painstakingly critiqued each paper under his custody. I am sure that at times authors objected to his decisions, but over the years it became clear that he was consistent and, more important, consistently high in his expectations. What is even more remarkable about the record of Phil Singer and his editorial colleagues of a few years ago is that they maintained such high standards while covering such a large domain of environmental sciences and engineering. Today, we feel it necessary to have twice the number of editors to cover the various fields of interest to ES&T readers, especially if we are to maintain rapid review of manuscripts. It is a tribute to Phil Singer, Russ Christman, and others who preceded them that they were able to maintain a credible review cycle while covering so many research areas. The expansion of environmental chemistry and engineering continues, representing a challenge to journals such as ES&T to decide in which areas they wish to maintain excellence in coverage. Moreover, the level of sophistication of the papers that are being received for review continues to grow, reflecting a maturation of the profession and the influx of more and more talented researchers. There is every reason to believe that this
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growth in scope and depth will continue. Thus, it becomes essential for interdisciplinary environmental journals to stake out the domain in which they will accept papers for publication. In this respect, ES&T has cast a rather broad net, and we will continue to do so. Our policy is to entertain all papers in the field of environmental chemistry, our primary domain. In addition, we will continue to encourage submissions in most of the subspecialties of environmental engineering, that is, treatment processes and transport processes; and environmental microbiology, applied environmental toxicology, environmental analytical chemistry, and modeling. We are also committed to the expansion of coverage in the fields of marine and estuarine chemistry and global chemical processes, two areas which have not been our strong suits. To cover these fields with the same degree of rigor that has been our tradition, we will continue to expand our editorial advisory board and to choose associate editors of the caliber of Philip Singer, who will be missed.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 25, No. 2, 1991 191
